Engine stress during racing
 

I want to go ahead and hit the tack with my FD as I finally tuned it. My motor has very good compression, orig engine with 38K miles. THe only thing stuck back on my mind is that tracking it is going to seriously hurt my motor, lower its longetivity. Would Consistant WOT do much harm if propery tuned and cooled? Obviously its not going to make the engine life longer, but is it significantly going to lower it? Thnx

Heat is going to your engines enemy, upgrade your radiator and oil cooler (s) and make sure they are ducted. There is no free lunch when you track a car, you are wearing out your engine components at a faster rate. Most engines that run the 24 hour endurance races, need to be rebuilt.

Rotaries conk out at the 80-100k mark no matter what. Might as well drive the piss out of it. An FC thermoswitch will do you good, also.

good advice? was this supposed to be a joke. The first post was actually good advice. Upgrade your engine cooling and get some gauges to monitor engine temps.

Change all fluids before hitting the track, and just do regular maintanence, like a new oil filter and such. thats what most of the people i know do. hvae fun racing

Well, of course the motor isn't going to last quite as long, and other things get worn out faster too. That's part of tracking your car! I suggest you either track the car and not worry about it, or buy something else to take to the track.

I was told engines have xxx rpm's you can save them or use them up faster. Faster is more fun $. But you can help by tunning and maintainance.

Basically, yes. Metal on metal is going to wear no matter what.... How fast it wears depends on the use of the motor. There is a reason race teams rebuild their engines so often. :)

Think of it like sandpaper. The slower you rub something with the sandpaper, the longer the sandpaper is good for... rub it fast, and it loses it sand very quickly and just turns to paper which isn't all that useful. ;)

The thing with FD's is that the engines never wear out and need rebuilding, they instead somehow fail and require rebuilding. They all seem to fail around the same mark (75K-100K) no matter how hard they were run.

If the engine is well cared for a stock FD engine that is run hard will give just as much life as one that is merely tweedled down the street everyday. At least that's what my experience has proven.

I would also wager that some of those failures are do to wear. ;) But in general, yes they don't just wear out like the older NA engines of the FB & FC's.

Ive also been told by people that Revving the motor to its recomended limits dosent put much stress on rotaries compared to Pistons. I guess that goes along what some of you guys are saying. I guess im just gonna try to forget about it and get it off my head and just relax and race :)

^ IMO things like warming the motor before beating on it hard and cooling it off well after beating on it hard go a long way towards keeping the engine happy.

I cringe when I go to dyno days and see a car travel a few dozen feet from the parking lot to the dyno and then immediately go to redline at full boost on a cold motor :uhh:

Exactly. I see people do the same thing at auto-x and the track too. Dumb.